Retro Video of the Week: "Turn Up the Radio" by Autograph

Friday will mark the 40th anniversary of the release of American rockers Autograph's debut album, Sign In Please.  The album was the band's most successful, reaching #29 on the Billboard album chart and #87 on the Billboard year-end album chart for 1985, eventually going gold in the U.S. in 1985.

The success of the album can be attributed to the band's biggest hit -- and their only single to make it onto the Billboard Hot 100 -- "Turn Up the Radio."  Interestingly, the band didn't record the song until late in the sessions for Sign In Please, and the record company didn't want to include it on the record.  Thankfully, the band insisted that it make the album, and both the band and label were eventually quite happy with that decision, as the song was a Top 40 hit in the U.S., getting to #29 on the Billboard Hot 100, as well as #17 on the Billboard Mainstream Rock Tracks chart.

In the still-blossoming Hair Band Era, this song, with it's hooky sing-along chorus, was an important because the video got a good amount of airplay on MTV and helped bring the genre to the masses.  The video is also notable for its product placement, prominently featuring a PaperMate Sharpwriter mechanical pencil in the beginning of the video -- a nod to the album title -- and PaperMate helped fund the video, so that the band could have a higher production budget than an unknown band filming a video for their first-ever single would usually get.